Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Syria And The Collapse Of US Foreign Policy

A couple of months ago, President Barack Obama drew a red
line in Syria. He said if Syrian strongman Bashar al Assad, the Middle East’s
answer to North Korea’s runt dictator, were to use chemical weapons against his
political opponents, this would catch Mr. Obama’s interest and trigger a
military response.

At least, that’s what everyone thought he said.

A little over a year ago, at one of Mr. Obama’s infrequent
news conferences,the president said:

“I have at this point not ordered
military engagement in the situation, but the point that you [a reporter] made
about chemical and biological weapons is critical. That’s an issue that doesn’t
concern just Syria. It concerns our close allies in the region, including
Israel; it concerns us [the US]. We cannot leave a situation in which chemical
and biological weapons are falling into the hands of the wrong people. We have been VERY clear to the Assad regime,
but also to other players on the grounds, that a red line for us is if we start
seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons start moving around or being utilized.
That would change my calculus; that would change my equation. [Here a reporter
begins to ask a question: “Somehow under… And Mr. Obama continues] In a
situation this volatile, I wouldn't say that I am absolutely confident. What
I’m saying is that we’re monitoring that situation very carefully. We have put
together a range of contingency plans. We have communicated in no uncertain
terms with every player in the region that that’s a red line for us, and there
would be enormous consequences if we start seeing movement on the chemical
weapons front—or the use of chemical weapons. That would… that would change my
calculations significantly.”

"What we saw in Syria last
week should shock the conscience of the world. It defies any code of morality.
Let me be clear: The indiscriminate slaughter of civilians, the killing of
women and children and innocent bystanders by chemical weapons is a moral
obscenity. By any standard, it is inexcusable. And despite the excuses and
equivocations that some have manufactured, it is undeniable."

A military response was imminent. When Mr. Obama said -- “We
have been VERY clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the
grounds, that a red line for us is if we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical
weapons start moving around or being utilized” -- he wasn’t just
whistling Dixie. The response, however, would be un-Bushian. It would entail no
American boots on the ground. It would
not lead to a Vietnam War boondoggle. Mr. Kerry, who both fought in Vietnam and
later protested the war in the company of “The Winter Soldiers,” surely was trustworthy
on this point.

Not to worry, the assault targeting Mr. Assad’s war material
would be limited in time and scope, “an unbelievably small effort,” Mr. Kerry
later explained.

Some people were worried, among them Russian President Vladimir
Putin. Assad threatened reprisals as American war ships were dispatched to the
area. Mr. Putin also threatened reprisals. Israel stoutly prepared to defend
itself from anticipated attacks. Great Britain’s Parliament, for the first time
since 1782, voted down a war resolution introduced by its Prime Minister.
France flourished a war flag then ran it down the flagpole. After pressure on
all sides had been brought to bear against him, Mr. Obama agreed to send the
proposal for a limited engagement to Congress. Democratic senators bailed on
Mr. Obama; Republican war hawks supported him. In Connecticut, U.S.
Representative Chris Murphy said niet; Senator Dick Blumenthal promised to mull
the matter over before casting a vote. The world, as sometimes happens when
Mars begins bawling from the rooftop, turned upside-down.

In a “Yes, the earth is flat” moment, Mr. Obama denied that
HE had laid down a red line:

"First of all, I didn't set a
red line. The world set a red line. The world set a red line when governments
representing 98 percent of the world's population said the use of chemical
weapons are [inaudible] and passed a treaty forbidding their use, even when
countries are engaged in war. Congress set a red line when it ratified that
treaty. Congress set a red line when it indicated that in a piece of
legislation entitled the Syria Accountability Act that some of the horrendous
things happening on the ground there need to be answered for. So, when I said
in a press conference that my calculus about what's happening in Syria would be
altered by the use of chemical weapons, which the overwhelming consensus of
humanity says is wrong, that wasn't something I just kind of made up. I didn't
pluck it out of thin air. There's a reason for it."

And then, quick as the flick of a serpent’s tail, a miraculous
thing happened: Eirene, the Greek Goddess of peace, Pax among the Romans, gave Ares,
Mars among the Romans, a boot in the arse.

War hawk, peace hawk, war hawk Kerry, during a press availability in London,
answered a question – Under what circumstances might this march towards war be
averted? – by making what a press spokeswoman later would term a throw-away,
purely rhetorical remark. “Sure, he [Bashar al-Assad] could turn over
every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the
next week - turn it over, all of it without delay and allow the full and total
accounting, but he isn't about to do it and it can't be done.”

Mr. Putin intervened
with Mr. Assad and then proceeded to exploit an entente. Syria and Iran, both
enemies of the United States, are client states of Russia. The proposal
casually tossed of by Mr. Kerry suddenly became a reality. Mr. Assad acceded to the
Putin-Kerry proposal to turn over his chemical weapons to a United Nations
agency, aborting a vote in Congress authorizing Mr. Obama’s belligerency.

The Congress,
called upon by Mr. Obama to lay its fingerprints on a resolution giving the
president authority to bomb Syria, let out its held breath, blowing off the
roof of the Capitol building and flattening the Jefferson, Lincoln and Washington
monuments.

The White House
later announced that the same proposal had been spurned by Mr. Putin a year
earlier. Now amenable to the proposal – given certain revisions -- Mr. Putin
made arrangements with both Syria and Iran to supply both counties with new
arms. Very likely, the turnover of chemical weapons from Syria to the United
Nations, traditionally a playpen of autocratic regimes unfriendly to the United
States, will not be able to be verified while Mr. Assad is at war with his
opposition. As a condition of the entente, Mr. Putin has stressed the
importance of U.S. disengagement. Translation: The U.S. must not ship arms to
the enemies of Mr. Assad, while no such prohibition would encumber Mr. Putin.
Such would appear to be the conditions of a Putin brokered entente between the
United States and Syria. It was an offer Mr. Assad could not and did not
refuse.

Among the winners
in the serendipitous deal brokered by Mr. Putin, other than Mr. Putin himself,
are Syria and Democrats in the U.S. Congress, who narrowly missed a bullet. In
the absence of the Putin-Kerry-Obama-Assad entente, the Congress was poised to
vote on U.S. intervention in Syria. Anti-war Democrats, weary of the repeated engagements of U.S. troops in
such corners of the world as cosmopolitan Afghanistan, the graveyard of
empires, some Democrats were in the process of jumping Mr. Obama’s war ship and
did not relish an up or down vote on Mr. Obama’s and Mr. Kerry’s “unbelievably
small effort.” That vote almost certainly would have affected upcoming
Congressional elections.

Having from time to
time rented the American military out to international interests as an enforcer
of what Mr. Obama has called “international norms,” the American people have
become suspicious of lofty supra-national presidential claims. In fact, there is no such thing as an
international foreign policy – never had been, never will be. A nation’s
foreign policy, throughout history rooted in sound distinctions between
friendly and unfriendly states, becomes incomprehensible as soon as it is
detached from national interests. For this reason, a president who fancies
himself a world historical individual cannot be the architect of a rational
national foreign policy. Unfortunately for the United States, Mr. Obama’s
international ambitions are, to put it colloquially, too big for his nation’s
britches. One does not expect clarity in foreign policy from a U.S. president
who seems incapable of making proper distinctions between the friends and
enemies of the United States.